


If you like piña coladas

by Tanacetum



Series: Vibing and keeping it tight [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Gen, Istus is up to some tricks in this AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23676973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanacetum/pseuds/Tanacetum
Summary: Lucretia has a heart-to-heart with Lup, her new crush/best friend in another life. An elf who should be a perfect stranger, if not for how intimately Lucretia knows her.Lucretia has no idea how she should feel about this.
Relationships: The Director | Lucretia & Lup
Series: Vibing and keeping it tight [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581217
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69





	If you like piña coladas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stealthtable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealthtable/gifts).



> Happy birthday to my dear coauthor! Best wishes, Stealth <3

“Hey stranger, how’ve you been?”

Lucretia clutched her notebook to her chest like a shield, as if she hadn’t deliberately put herself in this situation, as if she hadn’t been watching Lup serve drinks from the corner of her eye for hours.

All that time to make observations, and none of them yielded a plan for this moment.

“Um, I’ve been okay, you remember me…?” she ventured. Did Lup really recognize her?

“Yeah, you’re Killian’s friend, right?” Lup flashed a tired smile. She crossed her legs under the table, heeled boots thudding on the sticky faux wood flooring, and reclined on the dented bench opposite Lucretia with her serving apron dangling from one hand. “You work at the paper with her? I was slinging drinks at the Far Corners booth when y’all came by last week.”

“That’s right,” Lucretia said. She recollected her chill and sat up straighter in the booth. This was going to be a normal conversation, dammit. It had to happen sometime. “I’m an assistant editor; I approve the images she supplies for our blog, among other duties.”

Lup snorted and Lucretia’s gaze widened in confusion. “Sorry, that’s cool, I swear, it’s just that I’m trying to get a handle on your deal.” She sketched a lazy circle in the air. Her ears were cocked askew, one up and one down, and Lucretia wished she knew what that meant.

“It’s just that it looked like you’ve been tryna work on something,” Lup continued with an apologetic shrug, “and this is deffo my least ideal ambience for that? If I had to study in here I think I’d end up drinking myself under the table.”

She tossed a thumb towards the the veritable wall of televisions ringing the bar, now displaying talking heads recapping a variety of sports games from the evening. In a few minutes, as the bar finished closing, someone would be coming around to turn them off.

“Sometimes I like to write stories,” Lucretia said, with what she hoped was a casual mien. “The noise helps me concentrate. Writing can be a lonely pursuit, and it helps to have people around.”

“Oho, a people watcher?” Lup said. “Well, that explains why you were sketching me.”

Lucretia flushed from forehead to chin. “Sorry!” she squeaked.

Lup laughed. “Hey, it’s no biggie! I’m not creeped out at all. All I was thinking was, ‘That kid alone in the corner? Deffo not into sports, looks like a total nerd, the white hair is gorgeous, and is that her _eighth_ piña colada—what’s her deal’? So like, I might be more curious about you than you are about me. What brings you to wallflower at this humble sports bar?”

How do you look a woman in the eye and tell her you wanted to meet her? That you’ve heard what she was like: her compassion and fire, her brilliance, her talent, her humor. That you knew she took her coffee black and sludgy with sugar, she hated the smell of diethyl ether, she was a serial pen chewer, she has immolated towering monstrosities of twisted vines and broken flesh, she stole your hair ties like a mofo, and her favorite meal only existed on another world.

Lucretia can believe Lup would be the right person to save a hundred worlds.

She can’t say the same about herself.

“I broke up with my girlfriend yesterday,” she offered, instead of making a futile effort to communicate the barest fraction of the emotions tumbling in her chest. “I wanted to get out of the dorm. Take in some fresh air and/or blaze it, you understand.”

“Aw girl, I’m sorry,” Lup said. Her sincerity lodged in Lucretia’s throat. “Was it a rough breakup? Who was she?”

Lucretia shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter who she was. She and I just…we weren’t close in the ways we should have been. I think there was a lack of basic compatibility. She couldn’t understand a lot of the things that I care about, and I…I wasn’t there for her, either.”

Lup made a sympathetic noise. “That’s really rough. But it sounds like you did the mature thing, accepting all that and freeing her to move on.”

“I hope that’s the case,” Lucretia said with a weak smile. “And hey, I’ll have a lot more time to concentrate on my writing now.”

“That’s the spirit!” Lup cheered. “If I was still on duty, I’d pour you a pint to new beginnings.”

Lucretia pantomimed a toast. Lup jumped to mirror her. “To new beginnings. Would you like to see what I was sketching?”

“Hells yes!” Lup made grabby hands and Lucretia passed her journal over.

The pencil sketches were kind of rough. Lucretia was trying, but she hadn’t yet developed the deft hand behind the first pictures of Lup she’d seen. Lup as a bartender kept her hair shorter, with flyaway bangs. She wore more jewelry, but it was simpler—studs and small hoops in her ears, a plain sterling silver necklace with the pendant tucked into her t-shirt. No ring, yet.

“Aww, these are pretty good,” Lup said. She flicked through the pages, and Lucretia found herself immensely grateful she’d sketched a few random bar patrons for plausible deniability. “You nailed my smile, I make that exact face.”

Lucretia laughed. “How do you know? Do you spend a lot of time smiling at mirrors?”

“Nah, I’ve got a twin brother, it’s his smile too,” Lup said. “You met him at the music fest, remember?”

“Yes, I remember Taako,” Lucretia said.

She hadn’t known how to talk to him. No novel she’d heard of suggested a narrative precedent for how one should feel about the ignorant version of a best friend supposedly betrayed in another life. She was forewarned that he in particular was furious with her, and felt the stirrings of obligation to let him know so, even if that conversation would be absolutely buckwild and arguably pointless.

Regardless of whether she was obligated to take responsibility for decisions _this_ her hadn’t made, schmoozing with him felt dishonest. “I really liked his shortcake,” she finished lamely, for lack of any other transmissible thought.

“It’s baller shortcake,” Lup said. “Like, I’m a good cook, but Taako’s a _good cook.”_

Lucretia flashed her a small smile. “What do you do then? Are you in grad school for chemistry, or perhaps physics?”

Lup whistled. “Whew, I have no idea what about me screamed _‘genius’_ to you, but I’m mad flattered. Maybe someday, I would love that, yeah. But tuition money is kind of hard to dig out of the ol’ couch cushions, so for now I’m just at the community college, going for my associate’s in mortuary science.”

She waved a hand at the bar. “This is kind of what I’ve been doing since highschool. I waited tables first, worked up to that sweet bartending pay after I got licensed. Taako actually used to work here with me, he was in the kitchen.”

“What was working together like?” Lucretia asked. She realized her pen was poised to take notes and put it down sheepishly.

“It was a blast, but it was also really hard, y’know? We didn’t always have the same hours, and with both of us on shiftwork it was a pain to coordinate when we’d be home, who was cooking, who’d do the laundry, et cetera. We saved up to send him to culinary school first, and when— Well, anyway, his chef gig at Far Corners is pretty sweet, regular hours and a lot of ‘em, and he gets bennies. I wish _I_ had health insurance.”

Lucretia nodded thoughtfully. “Do you…have a partner, perhaps, that might someday claim you as a spouse…?”

Lup wriggled happily in her seat. “Yuuuup! Is it okay if I—Since you just broke up?”

“Yes, I’d like to hear about him,” Lucretia said warmly. She tamped down the barest prick of jealousy.

“First of all, it didn’t have to be a him, but you guessed right,” Lup said. “His name is _Barry_ , and he’s been one of my best friends for like a year now. He’s this weird dork of a guy, the sweetest you’ll ever meet. But I don’t think he’s realized he’s a catch. It’s like, his morbid interests kept girls away or something, so he’s still getting used to the idea that I’m completely gone on him. It’s _precious_.”

“Morbid interests?” Lucretia quirked a smile. “The most morbid thing I can think of is…necromancy.”

“Holy shit, you got it!” Lup clapped. “Yeah, he’s got professional certs and everything. He doesn’t do any corpse-raising lately, but he works on that big body farm right outside of town.”

“Mortuary science and necromancy, hm? You two are quite the pair.” Lucretia propped her chin on her hands. “Have you ever thought about doing what he does?”

Lup leaned forward conspiratorially. “We’re only like, four weeks into being official, but he sort of floated the idea of paying for my grad school down the line. He got all blushy and stammery about it. And I mayyyy have been borrowing his spellbooks. I wanna surprise him. I think he already knows, though—he’s got this big empty house just screaming for more company, it’s real easy to tell when anything’s been moved.”

“So you’ve got a sorcerous sugar daddy ready to empower you with dark magics and a middle-class lifestyle,” Lucretia teased.

 _“Yeeeeees."_ Lup pumped her fist. “His mom _owns her home_ , I’m gonna marry up!”

“I’m happy for you,” Lucretia said with a grin. She had wondered how Lup and Barry were going to work out without forty-seven years to get their shit together. Hearing that they’d managed was a relief. It was impossible to imagine what it was really like to live through dozens of apocalypses, but easy to suppose that must have put a damper on any nascent relationships.

“So, what’s your story, Lucy-Lu?” Lup asked. She tapped her nails on the table. “You’re letting me do all the talking over here!”

“Well, there’s not much to tell,” Lucretia said. “Let me think.”

One night, when she was only a little younger than she is now, the moon snagged on the wire frame of her glasses. It burst and bloomed, filling the round lenses, and poured silver down her cheeks and front. It dripped and pooled on the floor where she knelt, and when she looked at her reflection in those mercury waters, she saw herself transfigured.

Then, a woman spoke in three synchronized voices, girlish and radiant and wizened. Lucretia was too overwhelmed to take most of her words in. She still regretted that the memory was lost by her fallible mind before she could immortalize it on paper.

All she remembered was that she was being given a gift. The moonlight had brightened until it scorched, she squeezed her eyes shut in terror.

When she opened them, the journal was there.

“I’m an English major, with a concentration on literature,” Lucretia said. “I’m hoping to go for my master’s in creative writing after this. Um, I report on lifestyle and events for the paper— It’s something I started because my school has this program that allows me to claim credit. Mostly, on my own, I ghostwrite autobiographies and memoirs.”

“Okay,” Lup said with a grin, the tip of her tongue pushed into the gap between her teeth. “That’s fucking rad, I hope you get your first choice school. But is there anything about yourself you wouldn’t say at a job interview?”

The journal was bound in blue leather softer and finer than Lucretia had ever felt. Something about it screamed alien to her. It didn’t scratch under her fingernail, nor did the silver embossing the cover flake.

She had picked it up and stuffed it behind the anthologies on her shelf.

“Are we having a ‘freshman’s first creative writing project’ conversation?” Lucretia asked. “Two pretty girls meeting in a bar and spilling their life stories to drum up pathos? If so, watch out for any roguishly handsome, dark-haired men with ‘deep, soulful eyes’ swanning in to be my love interest. I would like to hide under the table.”

“You got it,” Lup said. She made a show of craning her neck around the room. “Nope, no soulful eyes, but the dark-haired combover belonging to my boss over there is giving us a pointed look that says ‘get the fuck out, it’s past closing’.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Lucretia squeaked. She didn’t mean to get Lup in trouble.

“It’s no big, I’m already clocked out. You wanna take this convo outside? I walk home, maybe we’re going the same way?”

This long past sunset, the streets were cooled down to a livable temperature. The air still held that melted-asphalt smell, but cicada song filled the night with a sense of bucolic peace.

Lucretia inhaled deeply and tilted her head back to take in the soft grey-orange sky. There was a new moon somewhere above the blanket of clouds, and the promise of rain hung thickly in the humid air.

“I was going to take a walk regardless,” she offered. “How about I accompany you for as far as is comfortable, and you can choose when we part ways?”

“Sounds good to me,” Lup said. “Might be all the way up to the steps of my apartment building, tee bee haitch. I got a bunch of good friends who live there with me, so if you’re secretly a serial killer, all I can say is ‘watch out!’”

Lucretia couldn’t fight her curiosity about the journal for long. After failing to doze under the encroaching moonlight, she threw off her quilt and padded back to the shelf, roughly shoving the books out of the way. In the dark, she recognized the journal by touch.

She sat with her knees up in bed and opened the journal at random. When she flicked on her lamp, a page full of faces was staring back at her.

Seven different smiles. Familiar, but not too familiar. Two women and five men: humans, elves, a gnome and a dwarf. They had been sketched with utmost care, each line curved to precisely shape a cheek or brow. Like the artist had drawn these faces a hundred times.

She quickly flipped to the page inside the cover and read her own name, and that was when she suspected one of the faces was familiar because it was hers.

“It must be nice living with your friends so close,” Lucretia said tentatively. “I’m still at home with my parents, and I’m really quite over the slog to campus.”

“Yeah, it is, and I love our building. It’s nothing special, but it’s the best place me and Taaks have ever lived,” Lup said. She whirled in place on the sidewalk, letting Lucretia’s distracted ambling catch up. The storefronts around them were all locked, but the perpetually buzzing signage limned Lup’s loose curls in neon rainbow. “Sometimes it’s a pain to have my brother’s buddies up our butts twenty-four-sev, but I like the guys too. And they’ve been just super great to us. I couldn’t ask for better friends.

“How about you, Luke?” Lup continued, before Lucretia could skim a safely inane platitude from the surface of her thoughts to offer. “Luce? Creesh? Cretia? Please rate these nicknames on a scale from one to ten.”

“Any of those would be fine,” Lucretia said with a laugh. She fell into stride with Lup. “Feel free to mix it up. Keep me on my toes.”

“Cool cool, but I also meant, how about _your_ friends? What do you do with your downtime, babe?”

Lucretia shook her head with a smile.

The journal never opened to the same page twice. That first night, she read for hours in a feverish haze, trying to glean enough context to understand what she was seeing. But it was like holding a waterfall in cupped hands. Her tired brain couldn’t put together a story from the incredible, disjointed details.

She fell asleep while idly flipping through the pages, searching for those faces again.

In the morning, she called in sick to school and started a more methodical approach. When she discovered that starting over at the beginning yielded new pages, she cursed her carelessness and grabbed for her cellphone.

She spent sixteen hours that day photographing page after page. They never seemed to run out. She stopped flipping back to confirm that they’d changed as she leafed through, in case that further scrambled the narrative.

After that day she slowed down—her parents wouldn’t let her miss any more school—but she spent all her weekends similarly.

“I have a bad habit of getting too wrapped up in my work,” Lucretia said to Lup. “So I’ve lost touch with most of my old friends from high school.”

Lup made a sympathetic noise. “Honestly? Me too. It’s hard, cuz most of them went right off to college, but me and my brother knew that wasn’t in our immediate future. Priority numero uno for us had to be making rent.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Lucretia said. “For what it’s worth? I think you’re brilliant, and that you’re going to kick ass mortuary school’s ass.”

“Aw, you’re making me blush!” Lup said. She skipped a couple steps, dancing over cracks in the sidewalk where weeds poked their spiny heads through. “Anyone ever told you that you’re easy to talk to?”

“No,” Lucretia laughed. “Honestly, I mostly hear that I’m stuck in my own head too much. ‘Wallflower’ is an apt descriptor.”

Her first major discovery about the journal was that the pages must be from different books. Sometimes, the quality of the paper would completely change, or the margins would narrow or widen. Whatever she held was a window into an entire library, and the tomes contained therein seemed, for the most part, to be organized by ‘cycle’, and then a date within the cycle, assigned by some alien convention.

Of course, there were also random pages of scribbled notes and sketches and coffee rings and just plain bullshit that would pop up from time to time, so she could never be entirely confident in her assessment.

If the journal was any other book, she would’ve given it up as too obtuse. The pages would jump from cycle 74 to 12 to 43 in sequence. The entries ran the gamut: ship logs with terse descriptions of trajectory and atmosphere; shopping lists annotated with substitutions made necessary by scarcity; research notes on foreign anthropologies; tallies of points towards winning bets; botanical illustrations of alien plants.

The bulk of the handwriting was undeniably hers, though. Once she allowed herself to slow down and take the story in, this woman’s meandering thoughts were far easier to follow than a stranger’s should be.

“That sounds kind of sad,” Lup said thoughtfully. She paused under the branches of a stunted cedar tree and checked her phone. “Unless you wallflower because it makes you happy, in which case, you go girl. But, if it’s because you’re afraid to meet new people, then I’m proud of you for sticking around to talk to me. I think you’re pretty cool, and I’m glad we met!”

“I’m glad we met too,” Lucretia said, returning Lup’s smile. “Sometimes I think my problem is that I need several thousand words to express a thought, at minimum, and that’s a bit much for conversation. I’m just more used to novels than people.”

Lucretia’s favorite journal entries were the ones that read like a diary. In them, she found a kindred spirit. This woman described her life with so much textured intimacy that Lucretia couldn’t help but believe every word. She lovingly detailed the foibles and antics of her family: their desperate search for the Light, their occasional victory, and, incredibly, their deaths and resurrections. Some pages would feature drunken rambles, splotched by damage from various and sundry liquids, and those would always make Lucretia’s sides split with laughter even as the secondhand embarrassment overwhelmed her.

Lup put her cellphone away and stepped out from under the tree, waiting for Lucretia to follow after. “So, you’re a big reader? I like reading books too. Especially memoirs of like, people who did inspiring things or helped others in hard times. Heroes, I guess. The one I’m into right now is about this woman who was the first person to fly westward nonstop across the Atlantic.”

“I think I know the exact one you’re talking about. I always found historical accounts fascinating. I read dozens of them before I finally got my first ghostwriting contract.”

Lup nodded eagerly. “History wasn’t my jam in school, but there’s a huge difference between reading about the big decisions made and the trends that resulted and stuff, and reading one person telling you what it was actually like to _be_ there. Hey, maybe I’ve read some of your work!”

“I doubt it.” Lucretia shook her head. “None of my clients have really been that remarkable. Thus far, the bulk of them have been C-list celebrities. Some of the manuscripts were relegated to vanity publishing.”

“Aw,” Lup said. “But you’re building that portfolio, right? I bet you’ll hit it big sometime. So, besides writing and school, what else do you do?”

Lucretia spent dozens of hours photographing the journal before she found more sketches of those faces. She relished immortalizing them as digital images. Then, the next day, when her mother dragged her to a yoga class (“You’ve been locked in your room for weeks, we’re worried about you!”), she walked straight into Magnus Burnsides’s bulging pecs and nearly had a panic attack.

“In the interest of getting out of the office, I’ve been trying to make myself do both yoga and judo once a week,” Lucretia said. “I like to pretend it makes up for all the time I spend hunched over a desk.”

From the entries, it had been very clear that the other Lucretia never expected to see the vast majority of the people she met during her voyage again. Everyone except the crew would be gone at the end of the cycle. So, Lucretia hadn’t really considered what she’d do if she _met_ anyone from the journal.

“Oh, is Carey your instructor? Killian's girlfriend?” Lup asked excitedly. Lucretia nodded. “That’s awesome. I’m kind of jealous; my friend Magnus keeps talking about how fun Saturday judo is. It sucks that I have a late shift Friday nights. After I graduate I’m gonna apply for jobs as an embalmer and say hello to weekday hours and goodbye to food service.”

“I’m sure it’ll be nice to work with people who can’t talk back,” Lucretia quipped.

“Yeah, I think I’ve earned it! Sports dudes can be a rowdy bunch. Speaking of rowdy boys, what’s Magnus like to be in class with? Tell him I’ll kick his ass if he whales on you.”

Lucretia smirked. “I pinned him to the mat last week, so maybe you should protect him from me.”

Lup laughed uproariously. “Oh man, he’s like twice your width, I’d pay to see that! Jules says he rushes in, huh?”

“Yes, he’s all thumbs and openings. I swear to Istus I have seen that man trip over his own bare feet.”

“Istus, huh?” Lup said thoughtfully. “Is that why the scarf?”

Lucretia touched the loosely woven band of rainbow thread around her neck. It was more tangled than knit, so maybe it didn’t deserve to be called a scarf, but that just meant she didn’t feel awkward wearing it out on a summer day. “No, the scarf is mostly because I’m pretty fucking gay. But yes, I’ve been…growing closer to Istus, lately. Not that it’s helped out my knitting.”

“Huh, so the Lady of Fate, but not the writing dude? Whatshisface—Denny’s.”

“Denier, and no, though I suppose my personal values may fall more in line with preserving knowledge and protection than with venerating fate. But that’s the funny thing about fate—it’ll find you in the most unlikely of places.”

She had thought about quitting yoga and staying away from Magnus. At the time, she was choosing between several colleges. There was a path she could’ve taken that would’ve seen her move far, far away. She certainly would have, if she hadn’t grown so invested in this mystery. The unknown significance as to why she kept being drawn into strange encounters.

It’s not like she suddenly started seeing the people from the journal everywhere. Her photographic memory allowed her to retain what she read, but without a coherent narrative, it sometimes took her weeks to connect the dots.

Often the information would only come to her once it was meaningful. She had worked with Killian for two weeks before the journal showed her face; never once in all the cycles was she mentioned, but the sketch was unmistakable, even if it was inexplicably done on what looked like a memo banning dogs from the moon.

Other times, Merle Highchurch would introduce himself as “Doc Hightower” to his class of freshmen, and thoroughly confuse the narrative for months.

“I sort of had a personal experience with Istus,” Lucretia said. “It left me thinking about fate versus agency, and the weight of our decisions. I know this is somewhat trite, coming from a college kid, but it can be overwhelming to think about the life I could’ve led under other circumstances.”

Lup let out a low whistle. “I don’t think people stop worrying about that after college. It’s deffo something I think about all the time—what me and Taako could’ve done with real parents, actual support. Whether we’d be wrapping up grad school by now, or if maybe we’d’ve turned out entitled and just coasted on daddy’s money.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree that even radically changed circumstances can alter someone’s whole personality,” Lucretia said. “You’re a hard worker, and you’re compassionate, and I don’t think having it easier would change those things. I don’t really believe that good character is built by suffering. I think that someone can turn out much the same way without undergoing trauma to get there.”

A few drops of drizzling rain peppered down across Lup’s cheeks and Lucretia’s glasses. Lup stuck her tongue out, trying to catch one, and hummed agreement. Emboldened, Lucretia carried on; “I think our mistakes are just our mistakes. Bad decisions don’t have to carry cosmic consequences. It’s freeing to think that we could choose to live our lives differently, and avoid some of that pain, and fate will work out all the same.”

“Soooo,” Lup smacked a raindrop off her lips. “I think I get what you’re putting down. You’ve got like, this fundamental supposition that fate is down the road from the day-to-day. We’re not talking from a standpoint of, ‘ooh, he ruined his life, no coming back from that’.”

Lucretia shook her head and smiled self-consciously. “I want to believe that, as long as you’re alive, it’s possible to still do good and experience good things. I don’t think we should ever presume we’ve twisted our path past the point of no return. I’m not sure such a thing exists. The world is bigger than that.”

“It sounds pretty Istus-y, to argue that mortals can’t really understand the big picture. The tapestry of Fate,” Lup said.

“I’m not exactly devout,” Lucretia admitted. “I don’t think I ever would have sought her out on my own. What I do believe is…that life is too complex for anyone to ever really anticipate the full consequences of their decisions. And that attempting to account for all those consequences is a futile effort. We’re all just doing our best, moment to moment.”

Lup slicked her curling bangs back behind her ears, gathering trickles of drizzle to pat the strands down. Lucretia felt faintly ridiculous, walking with this elf in the rain past midnight, and yet she wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else. “I kind of agree with you, but you know what else I think?” Lup asked.

Lucretia gestured for her to continue. Lup cocked a smile. “I think that people can change pretty significantly, but not in a vacuum. I think that we may not be able to see how our actions are shaping our lives, way down the line, but that our bonds with friends and family can _radically_ alter us as people.”

“Love as a powerful force for good,” Lucretia intoned.

Lup beamed. “ _Exactly_ , you get me, babe. And I mean, the flipside is there, toxic fucks can deffo try and drag you down with them. But what I’m getting at here is that, if you make decisions from a place of love? If what you care about most is doing right by people? Then, down the line, things will work out.”

“Verdant fields over that far horizon,” Lucretia suggested. “A golden land of promise on the other side of rolling hills, a far country that cannot be reached on foot or wing, but comes to us all the same.”

“You didn’t say you were a poet!” Lup laughed.

“I’m not, I was quoting something I read in a journal,” Lucretia said. She shook her head and pulled off her glasses to wipe; the lenses were becoming so streaked that the city street was obscured by the red and gold of headlights. “Author unknown.”

They walked a few steps in a hush that let them finally take in the building roar of rain. The last heat of the day had dissipated, leaving a gentle coolness to the air that soothed the body with each breath.

After the anxiety of the evening, Lucretia felt like she was walking with an old, dear friend. How foolish of her to malinger. It was always going to be this easy.

Lup stopped and turned towards her again, and Lucretia began formulating ways to run into her later, maybe in a week or so. “You should come up with me,” Lup said.

Lucretia blinked at the sudden brightness of lightning, thinking she had misheard. “I’m sorry?”

A thunderclap sounded and Lup’s ears shot straight up. “Yeah, deffo come in! This shit’s not safe. That’s my building!” She pointed across a small strip of parking lot to a five-story clad in white stucco. There was one room at the top corner with lights still on, silhouetting a train of dripping vines and flowers. “Looks like Merle’s awake—he’s my weird old man neighbor, he’s great. We can chat at his place if you wanna, so we don’t wake Taako up.”

Would wonders never cease? This day felt less and less real. Lucretia wasn’t sure she’d ever decide if these people were really hers, or phantoms from a dear story.

But she thought she could grow to love Lup all the same. Lightning flashed again. “Alright, you’ve sold me!” Lucretia called over the roll of thunder, just as a sheet of water came down.

Lup grabbed her hand and dragged her through the parking lot at top speed. After a few fumbling seconds, she keyed in the entry code for the side door and pushed Lucretia ahead of her into a carpeted hall. They stood there for a moment, catching their breath and dribbling rainwater.

Lucretia pushed her hands back through her hair and shook her head like a dog. “Phew, well, that last part kind of sucked shit. We’re drenched.”

“I’ll sneak into my place and get a change of clothes for us,” Lup said. “You look like blue’s your color, I have just the thing.”

“I’d be happy with a sleepy sack if it were dry,” Lucretia said. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Lup strode over to the elevator and punched a button. “C’mon up, we can hang. Unless you’d rather get changed real quick and head out? I don’t have a car, but we could wake Magnus up and make him drive you? He and his wife live here too. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked if you had plans to get home.”

Lucretia shrugged and stepped into the elevator with Lup. “I don’t have a plan, but I’m not worried. We can figure it out as we go.”

For now, it was enough to be close to these people who had consumed her thoughts for so long. The kind of friendship that could be achieved with such an incredible foundation was beyond her, but Lucretia suspected that the _why_ of it wasn’t her concern.

She did not have to hold the scope of the world in her head, or carry it on her shoulders. She could simply try to do right by the people around her, and be good to herself, and put faith in providence.

When she next met Istus, she would ask if the journal was hers alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Stealth asked for an exploration of Vibing!Lucretia and Lup's relationship. This piece raises more questions than it answers, but now you can see why Vibing!Lucretia doesn't get much screentime (she's avoiding Taako).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [If you like piña coladas [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014752) by [quoththegayven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quoththegayven/pseuds/quoththegayven)




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